ANWR oil could reduce foreign
dependency by up to 20%
By Timothy Droke

March 14, 2006
Tuesday

Every time I read a letter or news article about how ANWR won't
help America at all or it is some apocalyptic disaster that is
being invited on us, I wonder what these people are thinking.
Where is the evidence? The ANWR refuge is about 20 MILLION acres!
This is about the size of Connecticut, the last proposal in Congress
proposed drilling on about 2,000 acres. Reserves of about 10.3
billion barrels (twice of what Texas has).We heard all the doomsday
stories when Prudhoe was being brought online, someone please
produce some statistics showing this natural disaster!

The next argument is that this
is an inconsequential amount of oil. Tell me, is the amount of
oil we have gotten from Saudi Arabia over the last 30 years inconsequential?
Because this is the amount of oil that is estimated to sit under
ANWR! It is the same amount that we have gotten out of Texas
the last 58 years! In fact the estimates are that all the oil
in ANWR could fuel California's 37 million residents for approximately
15 years, or New York for 33 years. Even more staggering, North
Dakota would need about 393 years to use up ANWR (Alaska is around
220 years).

The argument that this one
oil reserve is not able to make a dent in the US consumption
is false, we could reduce our foreign dependency by up to 20%,
this would help alleviate our dependency on Venezuela and Saudi
Arabia - where we get about 60% or our supply now.

We are running out of oil,
the supply is limited and as we make the transition to an economy
that is not based on fossil fuels we need to realize that ANWR
could make that transition easier on all Americans. If making
that transition on the average Americans pocket book is greedy,
then by God call me greedy!!

Timothy Droke
Mesa, Arizona

About: Timothy Droke was born and raised in Petersburg, Alaska
and lived in Ketchikan for about 14 years. Droke is Tlingit.
He now lives in Arizona.

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